THE library BOOK UNFOLDED

an interview with Ben Brown

On iTunes · on spotify · transcript

“Dad would read for an hour or two once he’d done his Day Book. Another mug of tea. Another couple of cigarettes. Night time peace and quiet. He was a prolific reader and night was the only time that allowed for it. He liked Zola and Henry Lawson and a Russian named Sholokhov, and Steinbeck better than Hemingway, and any book that told him something he didn’t already know.

He’d read until he was dozing, then mark his place by a fold in the corner of the page, which the lady at the library gave him grief for, or otherwise by the simple and less damaging expedient of leaving the book face down and open to the page where he’d finished.”

—Ben Brown, A Fish in the Swim of the World

EPISODE NOTES

In this episode, my first interview, I speak with Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa), the inaugural Te Awhi-Rito New Zealand Reading Ambassador, from Lyttlton in Aotearoa New Zealand. An updated edition of Ben’s memoir, A Fish in the Swim of the World, was published by Penguin in 2022 and he’s also written many books for children, including the acclaimed A Booming in the Night and he's also served as the editor for an anthology of Young People's poetry from a workshop he ran at an Oranga Tamariki Youth Justice Residence, which we talk about later in our conversation. 

Radio New Zealand has two recorded talks delivered by Ben, online. One is the Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture, where he addressed the power of imagination and its deep roots in te ao Māori, and the other is a Pānui on youth justice and the power of words. I will link to these in the show notes, as well as to a diagram of harakeke leaves, where you can see what Ben is describing when he talks about its importance as a symbol. The illustration for this episode is also of a harakeke plant. 

Ben is someone who cares about public access to books and book-making, and about books for young people as well as adults. In his memoir, he explains how, and perhaps why, 19th century Maori literacy rates, which were higher than rates among european-descended settlers — called Pākehā — dropped in the twentieth century, something he touches on in our conversation, too. His rich knowledge of history, of language, and of a real variety of traditional and emerging modes of storytelling make him a fascinating person to speak with on the subject of books and storytelling, and the very first person I reached out to for this series.

image library